CAT 2022 Slot 3 — VARC Question 20
The four sentences (labelled 1, 2, 3 and 4) below, when properly sequenced, would yield a coherent paragraph. Decide on the proper sequencing of the order of the sentences and key in the sequence of the four numbers as your answer:
- If I wanted to sit indoors and read, or play Sonic the Hedgehog on a red-hot Sega Mega Drive, I would often be made to feel guilty about not going outside to “enjoy it while it lasts”.
- My mum, quite reasonably, wanted me and my sister out of the house, in the sun.
- Tales of my mum’s idyllic-sounding childhood in the Sussex countryside, where trees were climbed by 8 am and streams navigated by lunchtime, were passed down to us like folklore.
- To an introverted kid, that felt like a threat – and the feeling has stayed with me.
Answer & solution
Answer: 2314
Easy
Para-jumble. Find the opener, then chain the cause-and-effect of the narrator's childhood pressure to play outdoors.
Opener = 2. "My mum, quite reasonably, wanted me and my sister out of the house, in the sun." It introduces the mum and her wish — the situation the rest explains. The other sentences all refer back to this.
2 → 3. Why did she want this? Sentence 3 gives the back-story: "Tales of my mum's idyllic-sounding childhood in the Sussex countryside... were passed down to us like folklore." It explains the source of her insistence.
3 → 1. Sentence 1 gives the effect on the narrator: "If I wanted to sit indoors and read... I would often be made to feel guilty about not going outside." This is the pressure that flows from the mum's wish and folklore.
1 → 4 (closer). Sentence 4 reacts to that guilt: "To an introverted kid, that felt like a threat — and the feeling has stayed with me." "That" points back to the guilt-tripping in 1, and the lasting feeling makes a natural conclusion.
2 3 1 4 — key in 2314.